


The King and Queen

by TrillianSwan



Series: The Mamaverse [1]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: F/F, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Other, Pre-Season/Series 01, the Queliot and Maralice ships are referenced, who they are before they meet the rest of the main cast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 11:21:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19083988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrillianSwan/pseuds/TrillianSwan
Summary: Eliot and Margo keep up appearances.





	The King and Queen

Eliot and Margo are the King and Queen of Brakebills.

Sort of.

Certainly the King and Queen of the Physical Kids.

Kind of.

Except for how no one really pays any attention to them, and they do not have any friends, really, except each other. Eliot and Margo pretend it is because they are selective, exclusive even, and that is true, in its own way. The real truth is, they create a world unto themselves and make it so clear no one else is needed or wanted, that no one ever tries.

They throw summer barbeques in their perfect suburban cosplay, but they do not invite anyone else. They serve high tea in their best clothes but they only set two places.

Eliot and Margo like to pretend everyone does what they say, and they do, sort of. If they already want to.

The Physical Kids will come downstairs to a party that has taken over their house-- so who can sleep, anyway?-- and they will drink one of Eliot’s fancy cocktails if they  are in the mood and the bar is closer than the kitchen and the weed is upstairs, but truthfully, they are not a fancy cocktail crowd. They are grad school kids, they like to drink beer and wine and smoke low-grade schwag. They do not really like getting too fucked up because they are still getting control of their magic-- most of the physical kids have horror stories from high school or undergrad parties where they’d broken something or hurt someone by accident-- and anyway, they are all over-achievers who like to study on Sundays and not spend them nursing hangovers. Plus, the naturists have better drugs even if they do try to argue about the emotional life of plants. And few of the kids want to wait for as long as it takes Eliot to craft a drink. Though he tends bar most of the night, he only makes a dozen drinks or so, plus the ones he makes for himself. When he runs out of takers he covers by declaring loudly that _the bar is closed now, chickens, you lost your chance, better luck next time!_  to no one, and swanning off to find Margo.

They will let the front door be locked so that it can only be opened by Physical Kids, sometimes, since that’s kind of fun and makes their parties seem hard to get into, unless you come around to the patio door, which is wide open.

They will clear the room when Eliot brings in his new first-year friends and declares “Avada Kedavra!” even though they were all studying there first, and even though that is _so lame,_ because it is Eliot and he’ll keep making a bigger and bigger fuss-- maybe even sing-- until they leave and no one will get any studying done anyway, so they may as well just grumble, “Fuck you, Eliot,” as they gather their things and go.

As far as anyone can tell, Eliot and Margo prefer first-years because new kids do not know enough yet to be sick of them. But no one really knows for sure, because no one is actually friends with them.

One girl who graduated last year had roomed with Margo for a time, and knew she stayed up late reading every night and then would complain loudly the next day that she was _so tired_ from getting _so fucked up last night,_ and she knew better than to correct her _._

A boy in the third year also has a silent pact with Margo-- sealed with her death glare and his quick-stepping away-- that he will not tell anyone she sometimes studies on the quiet top floor of the library, in the back, in the wing with the nature magic books, because the nature kids all study outside and it is always empty. He wonders if it is to keep up with Eliot, who takes to everything so naturally. The truth is that, as a theatre major, she hadn’t had to crack the books in undergrad in a traditional way, as a lit major or bio major would, and she’s a bit out of practice  in that regard, even though she’s an avid reader and a quick study.

There are some faint rumors of daring exploits of debauchery, but their source is Margo herself. She and Eliot had a few bottles wine one night and managed to cast their way into the school records-- a seemingly endless room filled with rows of filing cabinets that disappeared into the darkness-- and forged a document that said Margo had been caught starting a fraternity called DTF whose hazing consisted of a throne made of naked freshman and put it in her file. It was supposed to prove she was the most badass bitch of all (or something), but when they realized as they sobered up the next day that no student would ever see it and it might hurt her graduation chances, they tried to sneak back in. It had been double-warded. She doesn’t know if they’d removed the paper when they noticed they’d been hacked, but she is expecting to talk her way out of it eventually by pointing out she’d improved their security.

Eliot never dates anyone but first-years, because all the other boys know you can’t get past his facade, he’ll blow you or fuck you but never for long, not longer than a weekend at most, and he’ll never let his guard down. Many of them have had to hold a friend who cried over it. Some of them _were_ the boys who cried over it. Both types do not speak to him now.

Margo never dates on-campus, so no one knows that she uses her lover’s apartments as a satellite study room, to hide how hard she works from everyone else. Her last boyfriend couldn’t get her to focus on him, as most dates consisted of her fucking him right away, like she was trying to get it over with, and then spending the rest of the night covering his coffee table in books and papers, her laptop shielding her from his attention. She said it was because this was the only place she could study with electronics. He made a golem of her who never studied but would spoon with him and binge watch Netflix instead.

Eliot made it his mission to get them invited to the Ecanto Occulto, which mostly consisted of blowing his way up a chain of Magicians in the city until he found one that was on the list. It took only two encounters before he found one. A threesome with Margo, who negotiated in some help with her term project _and_ a spell for their regalo from the cryomancer in question, sealed the deal.

Ibiza was wild, from what they saw of it. The Magicians had taken over Cala d’Hort, the beach shielded from all visitors and warded to the hilt, bouncers minding every entrance. There were tents upon tents, from which inexplicable noises created a cacophony of magic and pleasure and sounds they had no name for, and between which pressed a throng of people trying to get from one to another. Eliot and Margo had been content to simply show off their glamorous clothes as they made their way arm-in-arm through the crowds, imagining and playacting that they were drawing admiring stares and hushing crowds with their very presence, and making up stories about what was going on in the tents. In truth, they were kids at the grownups’ party, and while not all the stares were imaginary, the tents were private parties of unknown salaciousness and they were not ushered in. Their gift to the elders, an ice sculpture Margo made of two mermaids making out and writhing together (and which kept on doing so for four days straight) was a masterpiece for a first year at Brakebills but didn’t open any tent flaps. But their joking became an _in-joke,_ another private, special thing between them, _the night we were totally overwhelmed in Ibiza and didn’t know what to do and now we tell people we saw the things we made up._

There was a raging club scene going on top of the reef, bodies writhing and floating and spinning to the music, drenched in all manner of moving lights from seemingly no source. Eliot danced for a while with some naked elves, but Margo was not dressed to move, exactly, and her feet hurt already in her oh-so-high heels, so she sat at the bar, making a hobby out of refusing drinks from strangers. (She was from _fucking Los Angeles,_ and she wasn’t stupid.) She struck up one conversation with a very pretty, slightly older Magician, and was getting a pretty good vibe off them until they mentioned Henry Fogg and she stupidly exclaimed, “You know Dean Fogg?” The mood shifted to awkward and they left soon after.

Margo scanned the skies. Eliot and the elves had lifted off above the crowd, high enough that you could not tell, if you couldn’t guess, what they were doing up there, and now she had lost them.

But suddenly, there he was at her elbow, looking decidedly disheveled. “Okay, that, um, that got weird,” he said, and grabbed one of the drinks in front of Margo and downed it before she could warn him it wasn’t exactly hers. “Sex magic weird, which was pretty great, actually, and then _elf weird_ and that was-- too much weird.” He shuddered, and downed another drink. “Oh! But-- _but…”_ he said, fishing around in his vest pocket and pulling out a small baggie with a grin. “I got coke!”

“And what do elves do to their coke?" Margo said, eyeing it suspiciously.

“I have no idea, let’s find out!”

But one of the elves appeared at Eliot’s elbow just then, glared at him, snatched the baggie out of his hand, and disappeared again.

“Well, shit monkey motherfucking balls, El,” Margo said, then brightened with an idea. “Did you see the tub in our suite?”

They told everyone when they got back that they had to leave early because Eliot was being stalked by the elves, who could not get enough of Eliot’s seductive ways.

 

For their second trip Eliot took over the regalo and made a working bag of dicks, but it didn’t make any more of an impression than Margo’s ice sculpture.

They did meet a gorgeous Magician from Spain named Guillermo, and they spent a lovely day with him on a romantic-but-chaste threesome date, as he showed them around the historical parts of Ibiza and its various museums, holding both of their hands and sharing sweet romantic kisses with each of them. Especially Eliot, who was more bored than Margo-- who was totally geeking out-- and needed more attention. After tapas at his favorite local spot, and a romantic walk on the beach, he had to catch a portal back home to be ready to work the next morning. But he had been staying on a yacht that was floating over the water at Playa d’en Bossa, and he vouched for them and got them in.

Eliot and Margo wonder now if he had warned their host they were noobs, because while most people were indeed naked and there was evidence of an orgy happening somewhere inside, the Maenad who was hosting ushered them over to a quiet lounge area on the deck where they could socialize with some of the more quiet types over drinks. Quiet meaning older, some old enough to be their parents. They ended up at the railing, looking down over the lights of the beach nightlife and the boats on the water.

“Well, we made it onto a yacht, at least.”

“Yeah… is it crazy that I’m just missing Guillermo?” Margo sighed.

“No, I’m there too,” Eliot said wistfully, and slipped an arm around her waist and hugged her as they took in the view.

“We’re going to tell everyone we fucked him so hard he had to go home, right?”

“Absolutely. And he writes us steamy, longing letters, begging us to come back and whisk him away for more,” Eliot assured her, and she squeezed his hand on her tummy. “Hey, tomorrow can we go on a wine tour? Guillermo was telling me about the wineries here, but _someone_ was too interested in the Necropolis so we didn’t get to do one.”

 

This time when they came back, they hinted at a lot of smut involving Guillermo and that _just maybe_ they had partied with Bacchus on a yacht but _that’s not for kids like you to know about,_ but no one was paying any attention to them anyway, except Todd.

Todd is the only one who hangs on their every word and believes everything they say. And they kind of love him for the attention, and kind of hate him for being so stupid to fall for their lies. Eliot treats him with particular disdain for this, even though Todd is cute in his own way. That makes Eliot even crankier, sometimes, that he is being cute and being _Todd,_ because somehow him being cute and _not_ being someone else irrationally angers him.

Eliot and Margo and their exclusive friendship and disdain for all others remains a mystery.

 

To everyone but Jane, and Dean Fogg.

Jane and Henry know that they used to have more friends, or at least more casual acquaintances that they socialized with, though they always pulled to each other. Jane sees this transformation as only to the good and does not question it, but Henry privately believes that seeing all the lifeless, bloody bodies of the Physical Kids during the time loops probably has something to do with it. He himself vacillates between not wanting to look the students in the eye and bending over backwards to make some of their dreams come true before they face the Beast again.

Jane sees it more like keeping their dance cards open for the rest of the team to arrive. It is convenient to her that they have no other friends or obligations until Quentin, Julia, Penny, Kady, and Alice take their entrance exams.

Henry thinks she might be right, about the waiting, because the last ten times or so Eliot has not protested his assignment to Quentin Coldwater at all, just takes the card and looks wistful as he stares at the name. This time, Timeline 40 if Henry was counting correctly, a tear rolled down his cheek-- but after a second he blinked and laughed it off, embarrassed and confused, and went to wait for the new kid, complaining as he went about his eyeliner smudging and the dust in Fogg's office.

Maybe Jane is right and if they keep these two apart and set Quentin up with Alice then Eliot and Margo will not do something stupid again to try to save them. At least maybe it will help reset Eliot’s heart to back off at least once. And Margo just gets harder and harder each time, so maybe it will be good for her to have a break from losing a love again too. He sighs and wonders when he became as calculating as Jane.

Henry’s heart breaks each time, for himself, and for his unwitting warriors, his only line of defense just about to form, and he pours another drink. But he realizes, sadly, that he's getting used to this part, too.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> (I've added this to the Mamaverse because it's canon for that story, and I make a couple of oblique references to it, like Eliot saying, "We weren't that cool, we just knew how to spin a great story." Also the idea that this is Timeline 40, which means Eliot and Quentin have gone through an awful lot that they don't remember but still live in the echoes of-- "I bond fast" and all that-- is key to their relationship in Tell Mama.)
> 
> Rewatching, I noticed how really everything we think about Eliot and Margo come from sassy remarks they make about themselves-- except the dumb DTF frat story that's on the Syfy website-- and how everything we know about Ibiza is clearly them playing a joke on Todd, and all the grumblings and "Fuck you, Eliot" comments we get in the pilot and early eps from the other kids, and how Margo has read EVERYTHING and Eliot has seen ALL the tv shows, and I started to wonder if maybe they weren't as worldly as they made out to be. And maybe their love of sweet nerds is because in their own way, they are sweet nerds too. :)
> 
> Also, Guillermo is a reference to _Something Good_ , which is a hell of a good work on this site and I hope you all go and read it! I need to reread it and make sure this is true but as I recall they totally GUSH about Guillermo and the wild times they had and then G is sorta meh? when he shows up. (In Q's opinion, but he's jealous.) Anyway I couldn't help but think of that as another one of those "the story they tell is way better than the reality" things and so I don't think of it as stealing :) so much as supporting it by fleshing it out a bit. :) Homage, not theft! :) Really, go read that one like right now. You'll be glad you did!


End file.
